Cite as: 513 U. S. 374 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
themselves " 'as [a] self-directed boar[d] of legal inquiry' " or had "exhibit[ed] little patience," post, at 408.3
III
Before proceeding to consider Lebron's contention that Amtrak, though nominally a private corporation, must be regarded as a Government entity for First Amendment purposes, we examine the nature and history of Amtrak and of Government-created corporations in general.
A
Congress established Amtrak in order to avert the threatened extinction of passenger trains in the United States.
3 The dissent sees no more in Independent Ins. Agents than a narrow holding that the Court of Appeals' decision to reach the statutory repeal issue was not so imprudent as to be reversible for abuse of discretion. Even that is a damaging concession, given the dissent's apparent position that allowing a litigant "to resuscitate [a] claim that he himself put to rest" always violates "prudential" rules. Post, at 406. But in fact the language of the Independent Ins. Agents opinion is much more approving of the Court of Appeals' action than that. It declines even to brush aside the Court of Appeals' (questionable) contention that there was "a 'duty' to address the status of section 92," saying only that "[w]e need not decide" that question. 508 U. S., at 448. And it goes on to state that the Court of Appeals acted "without any impropriety," and that its decision to consider the issue was "certainly no abuse of its discretion." Ibid. (emphasis added). If we had not thought that the Court of Appeals' entertainment of the statutory repeal question was, not merely unreversible, but appropriate, we would not have rendered ourselves complicit in the enterprise by exercising our own discretion to grant certiorari on that question. (There was no particular need to intervene, since the Court of Appeals had upheld the law.)
The dissent also seeks to characterize Independent Ins. Agents as no more than an application of "the traditional principle that there can be no estoppel in the way of ascertaining the existence of a law." Post, at 404 (internal quotation marks omitted). It was indeed an application of that principle insofar as concerned the claim that the appellants' right to assert repeal of the statute had been forfeited. But forfeit was not the only point decided in the case: not every nonforfeited claim merits consideration on appeal.
383
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